Original Article

The Origins of Violence:
Is Psychopathy an Adaptation?

Abstract

Violence has been attributed to many causes including mental illness, brain
damage, child abuse, and social deprivation. This article provides a brief
overview of some recent work on sociopathy and psychopathy and argues that
models of violence, and explanations of violent acts such as rape and homicide,
need to accommodate the possibility that a large proportion of such acts are
committed by individuals whose psychology is very different to that of the
general population.

Introduction

Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) used the term insanity without delirium to
describe behaviour that was marked by complete remorselessness, but the modern
concept of ‘psychopathy’ was put forward by Hervey Cleckley (1903-1984) in
his classic work The Mask of Sanity (1941). According to Cleckley’s
criteria a psychopath is an intelligent person characterised by poverty of
emotions, who has no sense of shame, is superficially charming, is manipulative,
who shows irresponsible behaviour, and is inadequately motivated. Interspersed
in Cleckley’s vivid clinical descriptions are phrases such as ‘shrewdness
and agility of mind,’ ‘talks entertainingly,’ and ‘exceptional charm’
(Hare, 1993, p. 27). Cleckley also provides a striking interpretation of the
meaning of the psychopath’s behaviour:

The [psychopath] is unfamiliar with the primary facts or data of what
might be called personal values and is altogether incapable of understanding
such matters. It is impossible for him to take even a slight interest in the
tragedy or joy or the striving of humanity as presented in serious
literature or art. He is also indifferent to all these matters in life
itself. Beauty and ugliness, except in a very superficial sense, goodness,
evil, love, horror, and humour have no actual meaning, no power to move him.
He is, furthermore, lacking in the ability to see that others are moved. It
is as though he were colour-blind, despite his sharp intelligence, to this
aspect of human existence. It cannot be explained to him because there is
nothing in his orbit of awareness that can bridge the gap with comparison.
He can repeat the words and say glibly that he understands, and there is no
way for him to realize that he does not understand (Cleckley, 1941, p. 90
quoted in Hare, 1993, pp. 27-28).

The terms ‘psychopathy’ and ‘sociopathy’ are used interchangeably
with the latter often being used to avoid confusion with psychoticism and
insanity, though the choice of term also often reflects the user’s views on
whether the determinants of the condition are psychological, biological, and
genetic on the one hand or social forces and early experience on the other
(Hare, 1993, p. 23). The American Psychiatric Association’s category of antisocial
personality disorder (introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, 1980) was supposed to have covered
psychopathy, but because clinicians were not thought sufficiently competent to
assess personality traits the DSM definitions have concentrated on the
antisocial and criminal behaviours associated with the condition. This
has blurred the distinction between psychopaths and criminals, and of course
most of the latter are not psychopaths. Antisocial Personality Disorder
(category 301.7) is described in DSM-IV simply as ‘a pervasive pattern
of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in
childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood… This pattern has
also been referred to as psychopathy, sociopathy, or dyssocial personality
disorder’ (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 645). This confusion of
terminology is especially damaging for research because whereas DSM-IV describes
APD as ‘associated with low socio-economic status’ (1994, p. 647)
psychopathy ‘seems less likely to be associated with social
disadvantage or adversity’ (Rutter, Giller & Hagell, 1998, p. 110).

Robert Hare has described his attempts to identify true psychopaths as a
prison psychologist in the early 1960s. Most of the personality ‘measures’
or ‘instruments’ popular at that time, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI), were questionnaires based on self-reporting. When
administered to psychopaths, who are expert at ‘impression management’
(Hare, 1993, p. 30) these instruments are less than reliable. One of the inmates
in Hare’s research program even had a complete set of MMPI tests and
interpretation manuals and, for a fee, would advise fellow inmates on the
correct answers to show the steady improvement more likely to lead to parole.
Another inmate ‘had an institutional file that contained three completely
different MMPI profiles. Obtained about a year apart, the first suggested that
the man was psychotic, the second that he was perfectly normal, and the third
that he was mildly disturbed’ (Hare, 1993, p. 31). Each of these profiles had
been treated as genuine, but each had in fact been produced to meet specific
objectives: the inmate’s desire first to transfer to a psychiatric hospital,
then to transfer back to the main prison after he found that conditions were not
to his liking, and finally to secure a supply of Valium. Hare decided to
construct his own Psychopathy Checklist in order to have a method of
separating psychopaths from the rest of the prison population, and this method
is now used throughout the world. The Checklist highlights the key
emotional and interpersonal symptoms of psychopathy: psychopaths are said to be
glib and superficial; egocentric and grandiose; to lack remorse or guilt; to
lack empathy; to be deceitful and manipulative; and to have shallow emotions. In
terms of social deviance the psychopath is also said to be impulsive; to have
poor behavioural controls; to need excitement; to show lack of responsibility;
to show early behaviour problems, and to demonstrate adult antisocial behaviour
problems (Hare, 1993, pp. 34-82).

It is difficult to appreciate just how different the functioning of
psychopaths is compared to that of the non-psychopath. After killing a waiter
who had asked him to leave a restaurant Jack Abbott denied any remorse because
he hadn’t done anything wrong, and after all ‘there was no pain, it was a
clean wound’ and the victim was ‘not worth a dime’ (Hare, 1993, pp. 42-3).
The psychopathic serial killer John Wayne Gacy murdered thirty-three young men
and boys, but described himself as the victim because he had been robbed of his
childhood. Kenneth Taylor battered his wife to death and then couldn’t
understand why no one sympathized with his tragic loss. One woman allowed her
boyfriend to sexually abuse her five-year-old daughter because she was too tired
for sex, but then was outraged that social services should have the right to
take the child into care. Diane Downs murdered her three children, wounding
herself in the process in order to provide evidence for story of an attack by a
stranger. Asked about her feelings regarding the incident Downs replied ‘I
couldn’t tie my damned shoes for about two months… The scar is going to be
there forever… I think my kids were lucky’ (Hare, 1993, p. 53 quoted from
The Oprah Winfrey Show, September 26, 1988). Clinicians refer to the emotions of
psychopaths as proto-emotions, that is, primitive responses to immediate needs.
Hare remarks:

Another psychopath in our research said that he did not really understand
what others meant by “fear”. However, “When I rob a bank,” he said,
“I notice that the teller shakes or becomes tongue tied. One barfed all
over the money. She must have been pretty messed up inside, but I don’t
know why. If someone pointed a gun at me I guess I’d be afraid, but I
wouldn’t throw up.” When asked to describe how he would feel in
such a situation, his reply contained no reference to bodily sensations. He
said things such as, “I’d give you the money”; “I’d think of ways
to get the drop on you”; “I’d try and get my ass out of there.” When
asked how he would feel, not what he would think or do, he seemed
perplexed. Asked if he ever felt his heart pound or his stomach churn, he
replied, “Of course! I’m not a robot. I really get pumped up when I have
sex or when I get into a fight” (Hare, 1993, pp. 53-4).

The prevalence of APD is estimated at three percent in males and one percent
in females (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 648), but the rate of
psychopathy according to the Cleckley/Hare criteria is probably about one
percent (Hare, 1993, p. 74). Half of all serial rapists may be psychopaths
(Prentky & Knight, 1991). The recidivism rate of psychopaths is roughly
double that of non-psychopathic offenders, and the violent recidivism rate is
about triple that of other offenders (Hare, 1993, p. 96). Insight-oriented
therapies actually appear to make psychopaths (but not non-psychopaths) more
likely to recidivate (Quinsey & Lalumière, 1995),
possibly because psychopaths use psychotherapy sessions to develop their skills
in psychological manipulation, and because they see no need to change their
admirable personalities (Hare, 1993, pp. 192-206). Because of a lack of research
and the confusion over terminology it is not clear whether there are differences
between males and females in the prevalence of psychopathy. However, Hare
estimates that abut 20 percent of male and female prison inmates are psychopaths
and that psychopaths are responsible for more than 50 percent of the serious
crimes committed (Hare, 1993, p. 87). Cloninger’s ‘two-threshold’ model
suggests a polygenic and sex-limited contribution to psychopathy according to
which more men than women would pass the threshold for activation of
predisposing genes. This model predicts that males should be more susceptible to
environmental influences and females who do become psychopathic should have a
greater genetic predisposition; this is confirmed by the finding that the
offspring of female psychopaths are more vulnerable than those of male
psychopaths (Cloninger, Reich & Guze, 1975; Mealey, 1995, pp. 526-7). As
Mealey explains,

The two-threshold model thus explains in a proximate sense what
sociobiologists would predict from a more ultimate perspective. The fact
that males are more susceptible than females to the environmental conditions
of their early years fits well with sociobiological theory in that the
greater variance in male reproductive capacity makes their “choice” of
life strategy somewhat more risky and therefore more subject to selective
pressures (Buss, 1988; Mealey & Segal, 1993; Symons, 1979).
Sociobiological reasoning thus leads to the postulate that males should be
more sensitive to environmental cues that (1) trigger environmentally
contingent or developmentally canalised life history strategies or (2) are
stimuli for which genetically based individual differences in response
thresholds have evolved (Mealey, 1995, p. 527).

Draper and Harpending’s (1982) work on the relationship between adolescent
reproductive strategies and father absence is based on the idea that the
development of alternative reproductive strategies is contingent on the nature
of environmental risk and uncertainty. The optimality of any reproductive
strategy is dependent on local environmental contingencies. In addition to the
cue for reproductive strategies provided by father absence Chisholm (1999)
suggests that a socioassessment can be communicated via the attachment
process, and that the nature of this socioassessment can have an impact on
variance in reproductive strategies including age at menarche, age at first
sexual activity, and number of mating partners. A poor socioassessment can
contribute to the risky patterns of behaviour identified as the Young Male/Young
Female Syndromes. A similar model has been proposed by Belsky, Steinberg, and
Draper (1991) in which the developmental trajectory is part of a reproductive
strategy ‘hypothesized to be associated with earlier timing of puberty,
earlier onset of sexual activity, unstable pair bonds, and limited parental
investment’ (Belsky, 1995, p. 545). Linda Mealey argues that males who are ‘competitively
disadvantaged with respect to the ability to obtain resources and mating
opportunities… who are least likely to outcompete other males in a status
hierarchy, or to acquire mates through female choice are the ones most likely to
adopt a cheating strategy’ (1995, p. 527). Harpending and Sobus (1987)
predicted that human cheaters should have the following traits

Human cheaters would not be detectable by instruments routinely available
to his or her conspecifics… [and] should be very mobile during their
lifetimes. The longer a cheater interacts with the same group of
conspecifics the more likely they are to recognize the cheater’s strategy
and to refuse to engage in interactions with him or her. There will be costs
of mobility, since the mobile cheater will have to learn a new social
environment after a move, and he or she will need to be skilled at it. A
third prediction is that human cheaters would be especially facile with
words, language, and interpersonal empathy… Human male and female cheaters
should exhibit very different patterns of cheating, reflecting the obligate
mammalian dimorphism in reproductive strategy and potential. A male cheater
should be especially skilful at persuading females to copulate and at
deceiving females about his control of resources and about the likelihood of
his provisioning future offspring. Females, on the other hand, should feign
lack of interest in copulation in order to deceive males about their
paternity confidence. They should also exaggerate need and helplessness in
order to induce males to provide them with more resources and support then
they might otherwise provide. Finally, female cheaters might abandon
offspring as soon as they perceived that the chance of offspring survival
exceeded some critical value (Harpending & Sobus, 1987, 65S-66S).

In Mealey’s terminology primary sociopaths are biologically contraprepared
to learn empathy and consequently demonstrate psychopathic behaviour at an early
stage, whereas secondary sociopaths encounter a combination of risk
factors such as a large number of siblings, low socio-economic status, urban
residency, low intelligence and poor social skills. These variables contribute
to the development of secondary sociopathy in a two stage process involving
initially parental neglect, abuse, inconsistent discipline, and punishment as
opposed to rewards. In the second stage children may be at a social disadvantage
because of poor social skills and may therefore interact primarily with a peer
group comprised other unskilled individuals, including primary sociopaths.
Mealey hypothesises that ‘antisocial behaviour may then escalate in response
to, or as a prerequisite for, social rewards provided by the group’ (1995, p.
534). According to Mealey primary sociopaths are ‘designed for the successful
operation of social deception and… are the product of evolutionary pressures
which… lead some individuals to pursue a life strategy of manipulative and
predatory social interactions’ (Mealey, 1995, p. 524). Primary sociopathy is
thus a frequency-dependent adaptation, but secondary sociopathy is a facultative
cheating strategy.

The ethologists Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1970) and Lorenz (1966) proposed mechanisms
that limit aggression in social animals, and an alternative model of psychopathy
based on this research has been put forward by James Blair (1995). In animals
such as dogs, who bare their throats when attacked by a stronger opponent, a
display of such submission cues results in a termination of the attack. Blair
has proposed a functionally analogous mechanism in humans: a violence inhibition
mechanism (VIM) that would be activated by non-verbal communications of
distress. This mechanism is said to be a prerequisite for the development of
three aspects of morality: the moral emotions (such as sympathy, guilt, remorse
and empathy), the inhibition of violent action and the moral/conventional
distinction. Blair has suggested that psychopaths lack a functional VIM and
could not be negatively reinforced by distress cues and further predicted ‘(1)
that psychopaths will not make a distinction between moral and conventional
rules; (2) that psychopaths will treat moral rules as if they were conventional;
that is, under permission conditions, the psychopaths will say that moral as
well as conventional transgressions are OK to do; (3) that psychopaths will be
less likely to make references to the pain or discomfort of victims than the
non-psychopath controls’ (Blair & Morton, 1995, p. 13). Using subjects
identified by Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist Blair found that

…while the non-psychopaths made the moral/conventional distinction, the
psychopaths did not; secondly, and in contrast with predictions, that
psychopaths treated conventional transgressions like moral transgressions
rather than treating moral transgressions like conventional transgressions;
and thirdly, and in line with predictions, that psychopaths were much less
likely to justify their items with reference to victim’s welfare (Blair
& Morton, 1995, p. 20).

As Blair notes ‘this study has not proven that psychopaths lack VIM, [but]
it has provided evidence that is in line with the position’ (Blair &
Morton, 1995, p. 25).

Mealey has proposed two different aetiologies for sociopathy, but in her
framework those displaying chronic antisocial behaviour are placed in the
same functional category. This implies that they have similar or identical
psychological mechanisms. On the other hand, Blair concentrates on the mechanisms
subserving psychopathic behaviour, but concludes that psychopaths have a
dysfunctional psychological/neurological mechanism and are disordered in
comparison to other members of society. With Blair I believe that psychopaths
may well have very different psychological mechanisms, but with Mealey I believe
that these mechanisms may well be the result of frequency-dependent selection.
Most of those who meet the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder do not
fall into this second category, and research that fails to distinguish to
distinguish between these categories is likely to be extremely misleading. In
one significant study it was found that the Psychotherapy Checklist could
not distinguish between psychopathic and schizophrenic offenders in 50
consecutive male admissions to an English Special Hospital (Howard, 1990). This
may indicate that some schizophrenics with a history of antisocial behaviour are
suffering from what could be called state-dependent psychopathy. These
individuals would probably not meet the criteria for either primary or secondary
sociopathy as discussed by Mealey and others. In terms of appropriate
scientific, psychological, social and therapeutic approaches to psychopathy it
is clearly essential to distinguish between the different aetiologies involved.

What is most outstanding about psychopaths is that they appear extremely at
ease with themselves. They can be articulate, are often highly intelligent, and
are regularly described as ‘charming’, and ‘convincing’. Psychopathy is
not associated with low birth weight, obstetric complications, poor parenting,
poverty, early psychological trauma or adverse experiences, and indeed Robert
Hare remarks ‘I can find no convincing evidence that psychopathy is the direct
result of early social or environmental factors’ (Hare, 1993, p. 170). No
sound evidence of neuroanatomical correlates for psychopathic behavior has been
found, though an interesting (and highly significant) negative correlation has
been found in 18 psychopaths between the degree of psychopathy as assessed by
the Checklist and the size of the posterior half of the hippocampi
bilaterally (Laakso, et al., 2001). Lesions of the dorsal hippocampus have been
found to impair acquisition of conditioned fear, a notable feature of
psychopathy, but it is not clear whether this neuroanatomical feature is the
cause of, or is caused by, psychopathy. A study of 69 male psychopaths
identified by the revised edition of Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist found
no support for the hypothesis that psychopaths are characterized by verbal or
left hemisphere dysfunction (Smith, Arnett & Newman, 1992).

One particularly striking feature of psychopathy is that extremely violent
and antisocial behaviour appears at a very early age, often including casual and
thoughtless lying, petty theft, a pattern of killing animals, early
experimentation with sex, and stealing (Hare, 1993, p. 158). In a study of 653
serious offenders by Harris, Rice, and Quinsey childhood problem behaviors
provided convergent evidence for the existence of psychopathy as a discrete
class, but ‘adult criminal history variables were continuously distributed and
were insufficient in themselves to detect the taxon’ (1994, p. 387). In a
recent study psychopathic male offenders were found to score lower than
nonpsychopathic offenders on obstetrical problems and fluctuating asymmetry, and
in fact the offenders meeting the most stringent criteria for psychopathy had
the lowest asymmetry scores amongst offenders (Lalumière, Harris & Rice,
2001). As the authors note this study provides no support for the idea that
psychopathy results from developmental instability of some kind, but does give
partial support for life-history strategy models.

An evolutionary game-theoretic explanation for the low but stable prevalence
of psychopathy has been modelled successfully (Colman & Wilson, 1997), and
though this provides some tentative support for Mealey’s suggestion that
psychopathy is a frequency-dependent strategy, cross-cultural work using
reliable measures will be needed to establish whether there is a stable
proportion of sociopaths in traditional societies (Archer, 1995). Given the
paucity of evidence in favour of developmental instability and brain damage in
psychopaths the suggestion that psychopathy is an adaptation is worthy of
further exploration. Particular attention should also be paid to the probability
that child psychopaths are mislabelled as suffering from Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder (see American Psychiatric Association,
1994, p. 85), or Oppositional Defiant Disorder (see American Psychiatric
Association, 1994, p. 91). According to Hare ‘none of these diagnostic
categories quite hits the mark with young psychopaths. Conduct disorder comes
closest, but it fails to capture the emotional, cognitive, and interpersonal
personality traits… that are so important in the diagnosis of psychopathy’
(Hare, 1993, p. 159).